


Some Spots Dont Wash Away

by shadowscribe



Series: Drown Me In Love [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Good men with bloody hands, Multi, One Shot, Solas can be a scary, making amends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowscribe/pseuds/shadowscribe
Summary: The last time Thom and Solas were face to face the mage almost killed the other man for his betrayal.This time they're in a sparring ring at least.With witnesses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a one-shot that was originally part of _Don't Stop Beating_ , taking place between chapters 1 and 2. Though, if we're being really technical, it [chronologically] takes place before the events of chapter 1. 
> 
> If you haven't read _Not Broken, Just Bent_ and _Don't Stop Beating_ you're going to want to do that first... or this is not going to make a whole lot of sense on its own.

_"Out damned spot! Out I say!..._

_What will these hands ne'er be clean?..._

_Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."_

\- Lady Macbeth, _Macbeth_ Act 5 Scene 1

* * *

 

 

When he had first come to Haven he had been met by the sight of four Templars circling two mages standing back to back, sparks of magic flying. Mages weren’t his favorite people, generally speaking – too many unknowns – but he’d never been of the opinion that it was alright to attack them because of their magic. His sword had been halfway out of its sheath before Varric had stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Easy there, Hero. It’s just a training exercise,” the dwarf had explained. “You’ve seen what’s out there. They need to know how to fight.” A solid plan, considering the world around them. Many of the mages trickling in to join the Inquisition were the remnants of dissolved circles and most of the warriors their former Templars. Templars knew how to subdue mages but had little knowledge concerning fighting them on equal footing – at least not when the mage wasn’t an abomination.

Two and a half years hasn’t changed much except that now Thom finds himself in the sparring ring staring down at the nervous mage he’d just dumped in the dirt, his shield a mere inch from slamming into the boy’s face. “Rule number one of fighting a warrior,” he announces, voice loud enough to carry to dozen or so mages that have been selected for field training plus everyone else that had gathered for the demonstration, “don’t let them get inside your fucking guard! That _means_ ,” he explains, spotting a hesitant hand rising in question from off to his right, “that if they’re closer than the length of your staff you’re probably dead. Magic is a powerful weapon but is just _that_. A weapon. It does not guarantee victory.”

He nudges the boy with his foot and steps back, letting his shield settle into place on his arm. More than a little white the formerly eager recruit scrambles to his feet. “You did good,” Thom tells him with a nod of his head, dismissing him. “Is there anyone else that would like to try?”

“If it would not be too much trouble, _Thom_ , there are things I have learned in the Fade that would be beneficial for them to know.”

Every drop of blood in Thom’s body freezes at the sound of the deep voice that speaks from the crowd.   _Shit_ , he swears silently and hopes that those gathered around the sparring ring don’t notice the sudden shift in his stance or the way his fingers tighten around sword and shield.   _No,_ he answers silently, because Thom is a lot of things but he’s not that fucking stupid. Once upon a time they had been friends.

Not anymore.

_You live because she wills it._

Solas would kill him without blinking. No doubt with a smile on his face. Giving him the opportunity to do so just seems like a very, very bad plan. What other choice does he have though? There are more than a dozen witnesses waiting for him to respond, witnesses who know nothing of what has happened between the two men standing before them.

Thom takes a step back and inclines his head in consent. “Of course,” he agrees gruffly and then clamps his mouth shut before he says something stupid.

The elven apostate moves over the sides of the ring in a smooth, elegant movement that Thom can hardly track and lands gently opposite him, the long inky length of his staff twirling ominously between his fingertips.  “As your instructor has so acutely pointed out, a mage’s strength – much like an archer’s – lies in their ability to attack from a distance,” Solas begins, planting the butt of his staff in the frozen dirt. It makes a soft _thunking_ noise that Thom can feel down to his bones, a door being slammed shut. “That sort of casting is fine if you expect to fight a battle hidden behind a wall of shields. Fair warning,” he adds after a poignant pause. “Those types of fights do not exist. Unless you are lucky you will be required to get close. It will become personal,” he lectures, the pale blue-gray of his eyes never leaving Thom’s face. It’s not his executioner that stands across from him but it is not the mild mannered apostate either. “It will be close. It will be intimate. And it will _hurt_.”

Thom flinches.

“There are two things that even the most simple of mages can manage. First – stop thinking of your barriers as a purely defensive tool. They are not a shield,” the elf spits, raising his staff, and it is only then that Thom spots the faint shimmer of blue light pooling around Solas’ feet. “They are a barrel of gaatlock. All you have to do is light the fuse.”

 _Oh, fuck_ , Thom manages to think as he throws himself to the side of the sparring ring. He twists at the last moment when he feels the mind numbing cold sweep against his back, shield spinning to crack into the wall of ice before it slams into his spine. To the average eye Solas hadn’t moved but Thom’s fought with him often enough to pick up on the subtle shifts in the other man’s weight and the way his fingers slide across the polished, beaten metal of his staff. He knows that the mage doesn’t need to swing his staff – or even have it in his hands – to completely obliterate him where he stands.

The barrier at Solas’ feet flickers, the blue and silver edges sparking, little minute shards of ice spearing into existence and shattering as the pool of light slowly expands.

Thom sighs.

“Just get it over with,” he mutters under his breath, because he knows what’s about to happen, knows what Solas is showing the rest of the eager young mages with their bright and shiny faces. It’s a good trick. And it’s going to hurt.

Thom bursts from his crouch, sword swinging for the elf’s exposed side, and the entire world explodes.

The concussive silent _boom_ of a barrier breaking blows outwards, throwing Thom back and moving through the gathered crowd like a storm through a field of young corn, flattening them as it goes. Thom lets himself fall, throwing up his shield to cover his face as the bits of ice magic woven into the barrier shatter into little blades, their existence  made known as they hit his armor in a hail of noise and bone rattling vibration.

“This will not kill – not unless your enemy is either very poorly armored or heavily injured,” Solas picks up, nothing in his voice to indicate that he is even remotely aware of the grown man lying gasping on his back, waiting for his heart rate to slow a little and his body to breathe properly. “It is however, immensely useful as a disabling tactic and as a diversion.”

Thom grunts and stabs his sword into the frozen earth, leveraging himself on it to haul himself upright. “Don’t hesitate to use it if you have to,” he adds as he straightens, spine snapping and cracking audibly. “Even if you have allies within its sphere of influence. Sometimes it’s more important to get them away from you than it is to let others make a kill.”

“…And if you happen to be traveling in a party that contains more than one mage, one of you should be able to stretch your barrier far enough to cover at least some of your party and protect them from the effects,” the elf picks back up smoothly. “The second thing that every mage should be aware of and proficient in the use of is _this_ ,” his staff spins in his hands, a blur of burnished black and gray metal and flashes of blue light that seem to drip off the rune attached to the tip.

Thom swallows roughly and abandons all pretense of subtly. He stretches, shaking his limbs inside the shelter of his armor to try and alleviate the tingling remnants of Solas’ barrier bomb. The entire crowd seems to have similar thoughts, all of them seeming to take a collective step backwards as Solas spins slowly in place, the serrated, double-edge blade attached to the bottom of his staff released from its compartment and glinting darkly in pale daylight.

“A staff blade. If you don’t have one, get one,” the command in Solas’ voice is enough to make the entire crowd jerk, shivering as the deep rumble moves over them. “If you have one, practice with it. I’m sure the Commander would be more than happy to point you in the direction of some capable rogues for those of you who are absolutely clueless when it comes to handling blades. Which I suspect is all of you.” The bald mage pauses to smile, a great wolfish thing that bares his teeth and absolutely does not help the wild, slightly terrified looks on the mages faces. “Don’t worry. Harritt won’t give you something like this,” he nods at the blade in question. “Standard staff blades are one sided and a bit smaller.” He pauses and glances back at Thom, lips set in a firm line as he raises an eyebrow. “Are you ready?”

Thom’s breath catches uncomfortably in his ribs. For a moment it’s the old Solas with serious eyes and a slight quirk to one side of his lip that might be the beginnings of a smile. The Solas that he taught how to play Diamondback. The Solas that used to join him after a battle in silent commemoration for the dead, for all the dead that they’d had walked away from. The Solas that used to spin tales of the Fade and attempt to teach him how to play chess. For a moment it’s the Solas that had been his friend.

“As I’ll ever be,” he replies and Solas tilts his head in acknowledgment.

Fighting in a sparring ring is different than the real thing. Once you’ve experienced the real thing you can imitate it in the sparring ring but until then anything you do is just blind practice – a hope that if you instill enough memories that when the shit hits the fan you’ll come out of it alive. Solas and Thom have both seen the real thing, both lived it, both nearly died in it more times than they can count. Even in the sparring ring it is real.

Especially between them.

The fight is short. Not as short as their first encounter, but short. These sorts of encounters are. Soldiers spend ages sparring, practicing moves but the reality of battle is that it’s short and brutal and bloody.

They meet in a clash of metal, Solas’ staff whirling almost faster than he can see to knock back the strike of his shield before catching the lung of his sword, the edge of it sliding the staff and sending a metallic shriek through the air.

It feels good to hit at him. It probably shouldn’t, but it does. Andraste preserve him, it does.

After the years of guilt and desperate hiding, after the sure torture of falling in love while wearing a face that was not his own, after having to leave her, and after all the heartache and misery that has followed since then it is a relief to finally hit _back_. The day after Catheryn pardoned him, politically freeing him of the sins that will haunt him for the rest of his life, Bull had dragged him out of the tavern, shoved a practice sword into his hand, and beat the shit out of him. It’d been exactly what he’d needed to help clear his head.

It hadn’t occurred to him that he might also need the reverse.

The flat line of Solas’ mouth flinches as Thom’s shield slams into his shoulder, the sheath of blue light that flows over his form suddenly visible, tiny little cracks of light racing out from the blow. If this were a real battle he would follow it up with another blow and possibly even slam his body into the mages and trust that his armor would hold out against whatever is thrown at him. In a real battle it would be more about getting Solas down, about taking him out before he had enough mana to cause significant damage or before he made his barrier explode. But this isn’t a real battle. It’s not even a real sparring session. It’s a teaching moment and so Thom lets Solas go, lets him spin away in a movement so fluid as to appear boneless.

Solas lands the next blow.

Slightly off balance from jerking out of the way of the blade’s teeth the quick return swing of its head catches him in the ear, making his head ring. When Thom turns to engage him the elf isn’t there, drifting away like smoke in the wind. “Fuck,” he growls, because he knows what’s coming. The apostate is sneakier than Cole when he wants to be and can pack a punch that makes Bull stagger.

He barely gets his sword up in time, shield and blade moving in careful, vicious counter movements against the whir of the staff. It whistles disturbingly, the cry of the air being forced through the teeth of the blade as it moves, and the sound more than anything else is what lets him know where the elf is, where the next strike is going to land.

And then the edge of his sword slips, falling off the staff before it reaches the end and he freezes, trying very hard not to swallow as the edge of the knife presses against the soft underside of his throat. 

“I yield,” he breathes and feels one of the teeth slip through his skin as he meets Solas’ gaze. There’s a calm in his heart that hadn’t been there before. The deep breath before the plunge. He’s just waiting to see on what side of the knife he falls.

Solas jerks back, the staff smoothly twirling over his shoulders until it lies quietly across his back, the blade retracted. “A blade is a blade,” he tells the gathered group, their silence louder than the noises of the keep bustling around them. “If you cut them, they will bleed.” He holds the tip of one long, elegant finger up in the air and turns slowly so that everyone can see the crimson drop slowly rolling down it. “Talk to Harritt,” he commands, “and get back to your duties.”

They scatter before his words, like a herd of nugs before the jaws of a wolf, scampering off into the far reaches of Skyhold and away from whatever it is that they have just witnessed.

When they are gone and they are alone, or as alone as they can be in the middle of the Inquisition’s fortress, Solas reaches for him and Thom flinches, instinctively jerking back from the touch of the other man’s fingers.

“May I?” the elf asks quietly, waiting.

After a moment, Thom nods. “If you wish.”

He holds himself stiffly, unsure of the elf’s motivations as he gently lays his fingers against Thom’s throat.  The swell of magic is instantaneous and familiar, a cool weight settling against his skin as he feels the small, stinging ache of the cut begins to melt away.

“There was a saying among my people, long ago,” Solas murmurs as he withdraws his hands. “ _The Healer has the bloodiest hands_. You cannot treat a wound without knowing how deep it goes. You cannot heal pain by hiding it. You must accept. Accept the blood to make things better. I…” he sighs and lowers his hands, the fingertips still wet with Thom’s blood. “I wish to apologize for what I said to you. Perhaps even for what I did.”

Thom grunts and looks away, conscious of the way his chest suddenly hurts, of the way his throat tightens beneath the elf’s words until he’s not sure he can speak. “You were right, though,” he admits, shutting his eyes against the assault of memory. “I deserved it." He can still see the look on Catheryn’s face, screaming at him through the bars of a Val Royeux cell. He can still hear the way her voice sounded when she sat on her throne and pardoned him, empty and broken and lost. He can still taste the tears that soaked his skin, can still feel the too-small weight of the body weighing at his hands as he holds her – his daughter. A life ended before it begun. Not his fault, perhaps, but it feels like it.

“No.” Solas replies firmly. “You have taken the first step. That is the hardest part. A very wise woman once told me that we are not our pasts. I bury myself so much in the knowledge and shadows of the world-that-was that I forget that, I think, forget that our stories are not played out yet.”

He smiles without thinking because he can hear her voice in his head too. “She said something similar to me. Says it, really. I never was much good at listening the first time. Catheryn, she… she sees things in us that we can’t see ourselves. She sees beyond the stains on our hands.”

Solas tips his head in agreement, his hand finally lowering to his side where they clench at the simple wool of his tunic. “It is why we follow her," he murmurs. "She is a singularly impressive woman." The elf pauses again, blue-gray of his gaze sharpening as he stares at Thom. "I hear you are courting her again.” For the first time since he started speaking there’s a thread of threat to his voice, a harshness at the edge that makes Thom stand up straighter and try to ignore the shiver that runs down his spine.

“I’m not. Not in the way you’re probably thinking,” he explains with a rough exhale. “Before… all of this I didn’t… I didn’t court her properly. I was too focused on trying to shove her away, on pushing her to safety even as I wanted her to consume me that I saw nothing more than my own selfish stupidity. She deserves to have someone think of her, to let her know that she is loved.”

“And the Commander?”

Thom snorts and shakes his head. “I could not part him from her even if I wished too. It will take more than death to perform such a feat. But… if they will have me…” he shakes his head, unable to find the words. Words have never been his strong point. Not honest words like these. “And if not I will move on. But I am here until they ask me to leave,” he admits quietly even as he prays that they never do.

Solas studies him for a length of time, head canted slightly to the side as he looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Would you join me?” he asks suddenly, turning toward the _Rest_. “Perhaps something warm to drink and a game of cards?”

Thom hesitates for a moment but then he nods, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. “I would like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote (and rewrote) this little piece five times before I settled on this rendition. The runner up was from Solas POV (and, in all honesty, the title makes more sense paired with that piece but whatever... I'm going with it). In game, Bioware draws a lot of [potentially obvious] parallels between Blackwall/Thom and the Iron Bull but there's a definite thread of subtle (and more true) comparison between our disgraced, not-quite Warden and Solas/Fen'Harel.  
> \----  
> For all of my readers in the USA - Happy Thanksgiving! Wherever the holiday actually finds you I hope you have a fantastic day... and that you manage to score at least one piece of pie somewhere along the way!  
> \----  
> The next slice - _Call It A Draw _\- will start posting on **Monday, December 5th**. I'll see you then!__


End file.
